


No Time to Spare

by iiRabbiit



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Time Traveler's Wife Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:54:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26563207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iiRabbiit/pseuds/iiRabbiit
Summary: Zack didn’t know what he was doing, he never really did even after the first time he traveled through time. The only certainty was that it was always for a boy named Cloud.Time travelor's wife au ? I think?
Relationships: Zack Fair/Cloud Strife
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	No Time to Spare

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BurntLoaf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurntLoaf/gifts).



> hello,, this fic is for my bff and its her birthday today also lmao the title spare,, fair,, get it

When Zack joined SOLDIER and started mentoring under Angeal, he was told the amount of mako he was going to be exposed to might have some side effects. __Not everyone has the same side effects but if you have any, don’t worry about it, it's normal,__ Angeal told him. Angeal got the occasional bloody nose and when he asked Kunsel about it, the man told Zack he had trouble sleeping and said that it got worse as time passed. He thought it would be small things like dizziness or headaches. Not time travel.

The first time Zack Fair jumped through time was when he was seventeen.

—

Zack woke up in a forest, sunlight pouring down through the trees to settle on his still body. Realizing he was not in fact in his room where he remembered falling asleep, he sat up quickly and looked around. At first he thought it was a dream, a very realistic one. But a few moments later, a ball flew down through the branches and landed a few feet away from him.

When he got up and went to grab it, a kid walked on a path through the trees and got to it before him. The boy was young, he couldn’t have been more than six years old, Zack guessed. His blond hair reminded Zack of a chocobo he saw at a farm when he was younger.

He now noticed there was a group of kids laughing and playing past the trees. Looking further past them, he now saw a few houses in the distance that probably made up a small town. “Where am I?” Zack asked. The boy looked at him warily.

“We’re in Nibelheim.” The boy looked at him up and down. “Who are you? You’re not from here.”

Zack looked down at him. “My name's Zack, I’m a SOLDIER. Who are you, kid?” __Nibelheim,__ He thought, _ _that’s such a backwater name.__

“My parents said I shouldn’t talk to strangers.” The boy replied. 

Zack let out a laugh. That was the usual lesson all kids were taught from a young age, he thought. “Yeah, that’s true, but I already gave you my name so wouldn’t it be rude to not tell me yours?”

“Cloud Strife.” Above their heads, in the sky, dark clouds looked like they started to form. A big storm was coming from what Zack could tell by the static in the air.

“Cloud, huh?” Zack asked more to himself than the boy in front of him. 

“Where did you come from? I’ve never seen you before.” Zack shrugged in reply.

“I’m still trying to figure out how I got here in the first place. I’m a SOLDIER in training so I should be in my room sleeping but here I am.”

Cloud’s eyes held a gleam of light in them. Zack could feel his body become sluggish, it felt like his whole body was shutting down and falling asleep again. “Are you staying here? Will you be back?” Cloud asked him.

“Maybe.” Zack didn’t know if that was the right answer but it felt like the only one he could give at the moment. He opened his mouth to ask the boy something but he didn’t get the chance because the world faded away a few moments later.

—

Time travel became a regular thing for Zack. While it didn’t happen every day, it almost always happened when Zack was supposed to be sleeping so he was never missing for a mission. There were a handful of people that he told about his time travel side effects but Zack didn’t think anyone really took him seriously besides his mentor. While Angeal had seen his fair share of strange events while at Shinra, Zack time traveling was in another category or weird. Especially after witnessing Zack disappear one day in the middle of their sparring matches in the training room. 

Angeal’s eyebrow raised slightly for a second before he went to pick up the training sword that fell to the ground as the wielder of it vanished. As he walked out of the room, he left the light on in case his pupil came back anytime soon.

—

One moment, Zack was staring into the darkness of his room trying to fall asleep, the next he is in the middle of nowhere. He looked around and couldn’t guess where he was, it was just a barren desert with no one else around. Then he heard an engine and the sound of a wheel turning in dirt, scraping through the sand. He thought the person was just going to drive by him but then they came to an unexpected stop. The motorcyclist was sitting on a their black bike not wearing a helmet but their face was obscured by the sand that was just lifted into the air. Finally, it settled and the blond man smiled at him.

Zack could tell he had seen this man before but didn’t know who he was. “I knew it was you.” 

His head tilted to the side in confusion. “You know me?” Zack asked.

Even that sentence alone made Zack’s head hurt. “My name is Cloud Strife. We’ve met before through time travel but by the looks of it, you probably haven’t met the Cloud of your present time. For now, I guess you could say I know a part of you that doesn’t exist yet but you don’t know me.” Every word that came out of Cloud’s mouth made Zack’s head hurt in trying to figure out what he just said.

“Wait,” Zack said, trying to wrap his brain around what the other man said. “Are you Cloud, the kid from Nibelheim?”

The man shifted his stance against the motorcycle and leaned back on its still figure. “Yeah and you’re Zack Fair from a little backwater village named Gongaga.”

“Hold on, __we__ ,”he pointed his finger back and forth between the two of them, “are both from backwater towns. You’re not any different from what I saw of your town.” Cloud let out a small laugh. “This is so weird.” Zack continued.

Cloud shrugged. “Not like I can fix anything.”

Both men stood there in silence; Zack, unable to wrap his head around the fact that he was in the future, and Cloud, socially awkward.

“Well.” Cloud broke the moment. “You probably don’t have anything better to do and I’m going home so…” He trailed off. He rubbed the back of his neck and realized he didn’t really know how to finish the sudden thought.

“Can I come?” Zack grinned at him. “Not like I can control time and send myself back to the present. So why not just go along with the flow?”

He thought Cloud looked worried for a moment before the other man put his leg over the bike and patted a hand against a part of the seat, motioning for Zack to sit behind him.

“Alright!” Zack exclaimed. He wrapped his hands and arms around Cloud’s waist as he revved up the engine to start going. While Cloud was shorter than him, it didn’t feel awkward to grab onto him like this, Zack thought.

With the wind in his hair, Zack transports back to his time in the middle of the ride. He felt a little disappointment that he couldn’t see more of what the future was like but he figured that maybe it was for the best.

—

A few weeks without incident pass by and Zack doesn’t think much of it. Then, on one of his days off, when he went to go to the slums to hang out with Aerith, he passed out in the middle of the corridor outside his room.

The ground under his body was different from the desert from the last time. Half of it was a cold solid floor while the other part under his head was a softer surface, a rug, he guessed. He opened his eyes 

“You stop time traveling about five years after we meet.” He turned around to look at Cloud who was currently standing in a kitchen. The man opened one of the cabinets and pulled out two mugs. “I mean, it still happens sometimes because the future version of yourself has visited me before. It’s just,” he paused in thought, ”not as frequent as before.”

“Five years after we meet? So it never really stops?” He looked around the apartment they were in; It looked to house maybe two or three people. Zack dragged his hands over his face

Cloud stirred his spoon in one of the cups of coffee he had just made and moved to add creamer in the other cup. “Yes and no. I can’t really tell you all the details because neither of us were too sure of it ourselves. There was a big incident and I was unconscious for most of it.” Zack didn’t understand what Cloud meant by that last part but he decided not to question it.

The man pushed one of the cups towards Zack. “That’s yours. Well, I mean that’s for you from the future but I’m sure he won't mind.”

Zack tried to think of the words this man said but he still didn’t have a clue in the end. “So, if you know me in the future, when do I get to meet you?” He questioned.

“I’m not telling you that Zack. As you liked to tell me as a kid, some things are better left ‘a surprise’.” He motioned the quotation marks on both his hands in a joking manner.

A door closed in another room over and both of them looked to find the source of the heavy footsteps coming near. “I guess that’s you back from the store.” Cloud’s smile was different when he said this. So were his eyes and words, saying this in a fond manner that did not go unnoticed by Zack. He left that thought alone but now knew that he and Cloud lived in the same apartment together.

They watched as the handle one of the doors started to turn and Zack disappeared in front of Cloud.

—

Zack finally gets the answer to his question about meeting Cloud a few days later. 

On the way to Modeoheim to find Genesis, the helicopter Zack was on crashes into a snowy mountain. Zack groaned as he lifted his face out of the snow. “Well, I guess that’s a fine way of starting things off!” He started to look around and found that behind where he landed, Tseng and the two infantrymen on their team were safe.

Tseng took out his phone and shook his head. “Great. No signal out here.”

All Zack could do was shrug in response. “We’ll be fine. At least we all made it in one piece!”

Tseng looked around and they could see that there were just piles of snow ahead of them. “Zack lead the way. You’re used to this kind of terrain aren’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah, I'm a country boy through and through.” He shook his head, unable to help that he was the only one here used to this kind of mountain area.

“We have to get to Modeoheim. We would’ve gotten there by now if it hadn’t been for the crash so we’re going to have to make up for the lost time.” Tseng stated as he started walking ahead of the group. “Let’s go.”

Zack jogged to put himself ahead of Tseng. “Alright everyone, follow me!”

Some time later after climbing the mountain for what felt like an hour or two, Zack turned around to see Tseng and one of the infantrymen lagging behind. “Come on you guys! Don't fall too far behind!” Beside him, the shorter infantryman had been keeping up with him for most of the hike. “At least someone is keeping up.”

“Well like you said, I’m a country boy too.”

Zack raised a brow in disbelief. “For real? Where are you from?” 

They both came to a stop and looked at each other. “Nibelheim.” Zack started laughing. Of all places it had to be that very town. “How about you?”

“Me? Gongaga” The infantryman raised a hand and covered his mouth, turning away from Zack in an attempt to hide his laugh. “What’s so funny about that? You know it?”

“No, but it's just such a backwater name. Who wouldn’t laugh?”

“Well right back at you for Nibelheim.”

Zack could tell that the other boy’s face must’ve been scrunched up under his helmet. “Like you’ve been there.”

“Oh, but I have! A small town with a mako reactor in the mountains, right? And usually a mako reactor outside of Midgar means…”

“Nothing else out there.” They said at the same time. Zack and the other boy looked at each other in surprise for a moment before laughing.

“Hey, Tseng! I got some good news. Me and...“ Zack trailed off realizing he didn’t know the others name.

The infantryman took off his helmet and all Zack could do was stare as he recognized the face under it. The blond hair that he had always seen in other years of the past and future was there and he hadn’t had to jump in time to see it. Zack’s heart started pounding loudly in his chest as the other boy smiled at him. “Cloud.”

His face hurt from smiling so hard in that moment. “Me and Cloud are both backwater experts! Country boys are winning this one right now!”

Zack wanted to ask if Cloud remembered him. He wanted to ask him so many things but decided against it. The next time they saw each other wouldn’t be for another few years.

—

When Zack inherited the Buster sword from a dying Angeal, he didn't get enough time to say his goodbyes before falling through time.

His chin is bleeding from a cut he knew would scar and tears running down his face when he sees Cloud again. It was the first time in weeks that he time traveled and this time, he landed at the top of Nibelheim’s water tower in front of the blonde boy. “Zack?” The boy questioned.

Zack looked away and whipped the tears from his eyes. “Hey, Cloud.” His voice was rough. It hurt for him to breathe, let alone talk when it felt like the world was caving in on him.

“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time. You came two years ago but it wasn’t the same as you right now. Why are you crying?” Zack turned his head upwards to look at him. In the moonlight, the blood on his face was now visible to Cloud. “Are you bleeding?”

“I can’t control it,” Zack tried to explain. “I can’t control anything and I just disappear and end up in places I’m not supposed to be or I’m gone from places I should be and I…” He laid his head against the metal behind his head. “I’m just lost.”

Cloud simply stared at him not saying a word but Zack could see the pity in his eyes. Zack didn’t blame him, he just spilled out everything to a kid who he still barely knew. Cloud turned around and started going back down the ladder and Zack just sat there alone, pushing the surge of his emotions back inside of him.

He was surprised when the boy came back a few minutes later, lugging around a box on his side. “Okay, I’m back.” Cloud dropped a first aid kit next to Zack’s body. 

And Zack sat there idly as they bandaged his face and sat there through the silence of Cloud starting to fall asleep next to him. “Why couldn’t I time travel to save Angeal?” He asked no one in particular. The boy beside him kept leaning on the water tower and they both stayed there until Zack disappeared again.

—

Zack looked around and was surrounded by fire. “Sephiroth.... What the hell…” Zack’s shock turned to anger as the buildings started to fall apart in the flames. “How could you?!”

In October, Sephiroth lost his mind and burned Nibelheim to the ground. As soon as he realized this, Zack ran as fast as he could to the mako reactor. He found Tifa, Cloud’s friend, lying on the floor of the reactor and tried to help her only to be refused.

“I hate you! I hate Shinra! I hate SOLDIER!” She shook with anger. “I hate all of you!”

Zack looked away in shame before continuing to run up the stairs to the lab. The metal door in front of him would not open and Zack threw himself at it, slicing it into pieces. He positioned his sword on his back before proceeding further into the darkness.

In October, Zack and Cloud laid side by side, bleeding from wounds Sephiroth gave them, and were taken away by Hojo. 

—

Zack woke up surrounded by shards of broken glass. Slowly lifting himself off the ground, he realized a scientist was trying to grab for him. Rising on his feet, he swiftly knocked the man out. He had a painfully splitting headache and swayed back and forth, trying to recover his balance again.

Next to the tube that he had guessed he had broken out of was another tube. He let out a sigh and went to figure out how to get Cloud out. Zack felt a contraption on the glass and slid it down causing the mako to be drained from the tube. The door automatically slid open causing Cloud to fall into Zack’s arms. “Oh, Cloud…” He held his friend’s body close in a moment of peace before wrapping his arms around his shoulders and carrying him out.

Escaping the lab was a laborious process of setting Cloud down in a safe area and clearing the way of anyone that tried to stop him. He was glad that he at least had a weapon and that someone had left the Buster sword next to his comatose body. Even after escaping the lab, Hojo’s grunts still tried to hunt Zack and Cloud down.

On the way to the old, abandoned mansion, Zack noticed that Nibelheim was still standing. It was strange considering he watched it burn down himself. He made a mental note of it would come back to it later when he got Cloud new clothes. His body felt light and as Zack laid next to Cloud on the bed, he couldn’t tell if he fell asleep or time traveled.

—

He wakes up to a pain in his heart. Maybe it was a dream or maybe he really was there, but Zack was pretty sure that he might’ve died. He rubbed his eyes and stretched before getting up and putting Cloud into Cissnei’s bike. He had decided to head to Gongaga to see his parents in case he never came back again. It was a stupid move considering it was the first place anyone would look for him but Zack felt like it was something he had to do.

“So predictable” was the first thing Zack heard someone say when he finally arrived.

“Hello to you too, Cissnei.” He greeted back. “Yeah, yeah, I just wanted to see my old folks one last time.”

The Turk shook her head in disbelief. “We’ve already talked to you parents. Your mom’s worried about you. Says she thinks you won't be able to find a good wife after this.”

“What’s up with that?” He asked, throwing his hands up, unable to react to his mother’s comment.

“They’re just good people worried about their son like every normal parent.” Cissnei’s red hair flowed in the wind as she turned her back to the former SOLDIER. “There’s another target in the area as well. Angeal.” 

—

Angeal moved on to the next life once again but this time, for good, as the sun rose on the new dawn. He, Genesis, Cloud, and Zack all sat on the top of the hill as Angeal degraded to his final moments and turned to dust, revealing Aerith’s final letter to him.

Having no more time to spare, Zack and Cloud moved on and caught a ride from a man in a yellow pickup truck.

“Hey!” The driver yelled from inside the truck. “Where to?”

Zack thought he finally understood what Cloud of the future meant when he said he was unconscious for the incident that changed Zack’s time travel abilities. He himself was still trying to grasp the reality that he and Cloud had been experimented on and asleep for four years.

“Midgar.” He replied back.

The duration of the time was spent with Zack telling Cloud about his time traveling. “It’s weird isn’t it, Cloud?” He managed a smile towards the blond.

When something started to shoot at the truck, Zack carried Cloud off and put him behind some boulders. He at least hoped Cloud would survive and wake up soon.

—

It took all of Zack’s remaining strength to lean against his sword placed in the ground. He was surrounded by the bodies of dead and wounded grunts that came after him and Cloud. Dragging his feet over and using his broad sword as a cane, he tried to go see if Cloud was still alright. “Hey, Cloud. You see that?”

Suddenly, a loud explosion behind him knocked Zack onto his chest, laying on the ground. He watched as a spark of gold washed over the area above him and he felt his body become lighter but still not fully healed.

Zack turned away from it and went to go pick up Cloud. He lifted his arm over his shoulders and once again started dragging him to their next destination. “Almost there, Cloud, we’re almost there…” Zack repeated to his partner, not trusting himself to be anything other than hopeful of their future.

—

“Hey, I’m back.” Zack announced closing the door behind him.

Cloud sighed and leaned against the counter of the kitchen, holding out Zack’s cup for him. “You just missed it.”

“Missed what?”

“You. From like 10 years ago. You don’t remember traveling here when you were younger?”

Zack scratched the back of his head and hummed in thought. “Now that you mention it, I kind of remember, I think. I was only here for a few minutes though.” He grabbed the cup from Cloud’s hand and waited for the coffee to cool down. “Thank you!”

Cloud smiled and Zack stared at his face with a confused look. “What?” Cloud asked.

“All those years ago… Why didn’t you ever tell me you knew it was me?”

Cloud finished off his drink before putting it in the sink and turning the faucet to wash it. “Probably for the same reason you didn’t tell me you knew me. I was six when I met some guy in the forest who later told me he was a time traveler. It was kind of weird and _ _it wasn’t really something that should've been possible__. Why would I tell my new superior, that I technically just met, that I knew him when I was younger.” He dried his hands and moved to go stand next to his boyfriend.

“Yeah, you got a point.” Zack realized and started laughing. He put down his cup and grabbed Cloud’s hand in his own. “Did you think we’d end up like this?”

“I think I had a crush on you for most of my life, Zack.” Cloud had blush dusted across his cheeks and it made Zack smile harder than before. 

“Well, you’re not getting rid of me anytime soon. Together forever right?” Zack leaned over and kissed him.

Cloud pushed his face away and tried to move away. “Hey, wait. Come on Cloud! You can’t run away every time you get embarrassed.” Zack laughed and felt himself starting to fade away. “Aw man. It's happening again. I’ll see you in a bit, Cloud.”

—

Once, when Cloud was ten, Zack visited him. 

“Are you still my friend in the future?” Cloud asked him. They never knew how long Zack stayed during his travels so he figured he might as well as now.

And this Zack, who Cloud could tell was older than the last one that had visited him, was different. This Zack, who had gone through almost dying multiple times while carrying Cloud’s unconscious body and fought an army to protect him, looked at the boy next to him and smiled before telling him, “Yeah. You and I have always been together! We’re best friends now and in the future, buddy.” 

**Author's Note:**

> ahaha,, implied romance later in the future bc i deadass couldn’t really figure out where to put romance bc ummmm head empty. I kinda wanted to make two separate endings where zack died and one where he didn’t (aka this one) but then i didn’t like that. anyways!!!! happy birthday!!!!!


End file.
